In 1955 at the first show that I competed in was held in Fort Bragg. This was prior to the chainsaws, they were all hand and climbing events. It was the biggest logging show on the West coast and possibly anywhere in the U.S. at that time. It was open anyone from anywhere, even Canada. The Paul Bunyan Logging Show started in 1939 and at that time just the first prize alone was $500 which was big money. That’s why it drew so many world champions in different events. Many of the world champions came there to compete (i.e. George Moen of Castle Rock, WA hand bucker; Kelly Stanley of Centralia, WA, climber) but the star attraction of the show was Danny Sailor from British Columbia. He was many times world champion speed climber. He would do special acts at the of a 100 foot pole (i.e. standing on his head, one legged squats, and dancing the Charleston). His decent from the top of the pole was his trademark. He always wore a black derby hat and as he was about to start down, he would throw his hat as you would a Frisbee and as it floated down, he would beat the hat to the ground—quite a class act. He had even performed in front of the Queen of England to his credits. There were other tree toppers such as Hap Johnson who doubled for John Wayne in the movie “North to Alaska”.
The choppers used double-bitted axes prior to the invasion of the Australian choppers who used single bladed axes and there were no standing block chopping events.
My sights were on the single bucking event. I had heard that Paul Searls was coming down from Sedro Wooley, Washington and he had been at least a seven-time single bucking champion. He also held the Guinness world record for a single bucker on a 32” Doug-fir by a single person. He used a Simonds 7 foot Royal Chinook 503 crosscut saw filed by Martin Winters of Olympia, Washington. I knew he had been retired for several years so I thought he would be easy prey for a young, strong, well conditioned bucker with high hopes. The only problem was that I only had the services of a regular local saw filer who worked in the woods and knew nothing about racing saws. The log they had set up was about 40 inches and was a super hard sinker that had been pulled up from the bottom of the log pond. I later found out they did it on purpose to teach the outsiders a lesson of winning big money too easily at the Fort Bragg show.
Paul Searls and I started sawing at the same time. About 2 minutes into the cut, Paul seemed to collapse and leaned his body, onto the log, arms and face down, breathing heavily. I continued sawing and in my mind I thought that I had beaten the world champion single bucker on my first attempt. Well, I was wrong. Paul’s friend was standing next to him with a stop watch, counting off the seconds as he rested and got his breath back. All of a sudden he started sawing again and beat me by 30 seconds. I sawed around 4 minutes and he sawed about 3 ½ minutes. What a disappointment, but it wasn’t my last.
Art Martin
:greenchainsaw:
